Design Debate

I love how pristine this home is, but also how it embraces texture and imperfection. There is something quite wonderful about painted white brick. I don’t know why, but it gives me an instant sense of calm. Cape Schanck House by Studio Goss sits on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula in Australia. There is something almost Roman about it to me: an elegant villa with weight and permanence, softened by light and landscape. The design makes practical sense too. This is an exposed coastal site as well as a family home, so the house needed to feel robust. I think it is perhaps the exterior and landscaping I love most. Every angle feels considered. The interior stays true to the same idea, with plenty of whitewashed brick on display. The house has been designed to let light play across the surfaces, with dappled shadows becoming part of the architecture. Slabs of marble, warm tim...

This renovation by landscape architect Brenton Beggs and ceramicist Katie Cudal was a breath of fresh air as I perused the internet. Their little apartment in Elwood, Melbourne, sits within an interwar building not far from the beach. At just 55 square metres it originally had only one bedroom, but it was bright, had lovely proportions and, perhaps most enticingly for a landscape architect, came with a wonderfully ramshackle shared garden. It would have been very easy to make a small apartment like this feel even smaller by trying to cram too much into it. Instead, Brenton and Katie lived there for two years before beginning the renovation, learning what they actually needed from the space. Katie wanted somewhere for her ceramics wheel, Brenton needed room for his considerable collection of plants, and they both wanted somewhere to work that wasn't the kitchen table. Researching other apartments in the same building showed them that the floo...

Such a sympathetic renovation. Dun Guaidhre is a small fisherman's cottage on the Isle of Mull that has been in architect Peter Harford-Cross's family for generations. When it passed from his grandmother to his parents, Peter and his wife Rachel, together Harford-Cross Architects , set about introducing a few creature comforts without losing the character of this remote island shelter. I love how lightly they have approached it. The old stone walls still feel very much part of the building, while warm plywood has been used where needed to line and insulate the interior. Much of the furniture and fittings have been sourced second-hand too, which feels completely at home in such an old, isolated building. What I particularly like is the clever hidden kitchen. The cottage is largely open plan, but smooth honey-coloured plywood doors conceal the little kitchenette when it isn't being used, allowing the ro...

Fancy owning a piece of history? Back in 2024 these two extraordinary fortified islands in the Solent were heading to auction. Spitbank Fort and No Man's Fort had both spent their more recent lives as rather unlikely boutique hotels, complete with bars, restaurants, spas and some fairly spectacular sea views. They started life rather differently. The forts were part of a chain built in the nineteenth century to defend Portsmouth from a feared French invasion. By the time they were completed the threat had largely passed, earning this great collection of military architecture the slightly unkind nickname 'Palmerston's Follies'. I think they are wonderful. There is something about taking a building designed entirely for defence and giving it a completely different life that really appeals to me. All that granite, brick vaulting, tiny windows and military engineering, then somebody comes along and adds bedrooms, ba...